Drawing Christ's blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the aesthetics of reform

Renaissance Quarterly, Spring, 2006 by Una Roman D'Elia

It is not possible to establish precise relationships between these two drawings and the texts written by Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and their circle, because the drawings and the texts are almost all undated. They all seem, however, to date from ca. 1538-42, which were crucial years for Colonna's involvement in reform circles. (11) While we cannot determine influence, the rich variety of surviving documentation allows for a reconstruction of the discourse of this elite group of writers, theologians, and artists. Like the letters, poems, and meditations written in this circle, Michelangelo's drawings for Vittoria Colonna were initially meant for the most private of audiences, but soon circulated among the reform-minded elite. (12) In the late 1530s and early 1540s, questions about religious reform became increasingly polemical. (13) Vittoria Colonna's poems were criticized as heretical as early as 1540, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment was attacked for indecorum as soon as it was finished in 1541. (14) Before the convocation of the Council of Trent, however, the outcome of these polemics and, indeed, the boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy were still fluid. Michelangelo's fresco could still be interpreted as a fitting symbol of the Church Triumphant and would not suffer censorship for over twenty years. Vittoria Colonna--despite her close connections with many people later charged with heresy--was never tried by the Inquisition, either before her death in 1547 or posthumously. (15) Colonna seems, nevertheless, to have been concerned about the appearance of heterodoxy, as she gave to the inquisitor Marcello Cervini the letter that Bernardino Ochino (1487-1564), her erstwhile mentor, wrote to her after his apostasy. (16) In this rapidly changing climate of religious reform, Colonna and others in her circle did not articulate explicit and consistent theological positions, but wrote allusive, paradoxical, and occasionally cryptic letters, poems, and meditations. (17)

1. VITTORIA COLONNA ON DISEGNO, COLORE, AND SALVATION

Vittoria Colonna compared Christ's blood to colore in one of her many poems on the Crucifixion and Salvation:

  The high Lord hangs on the hard wood
  for our wicked faults, and a sad heart
  does not gain such virtue from that valor,
  that it becomes worthy to hang from him alone.
  With divine words he makes the beautiful drawing [dissegno]
  of the true life, and then he gives color [colore]
  with his blood, and so that love might be the cause
  of this work, he gives himself to it in forfeit.
  The soul is alive with flames, and the intellect
  content with light, and with both
  the purged desire rises and grows stronger.
  Hot marks from the harsh wounds came
  to me by the thousands, so that I with true effect
  gain immortal life from his death. (18)

Christ's words are the disegno and his blood is the colore of Salvation. Colonna uses the metaphor to comment not upon art, but religion. The way in which she applies these terms is revealing, though, of her assumptions about them. Colore is the fulfillment of the initial disegno of words. It is corporeal, not intellectual. While both words and blood are praised here as complimentary qualities, the rest of the poem implies that blood is the more direct way to Salvation. The poem focuses not on Christ as a teacher, but on Christ Crucified, in a way that is typical of the theology of this circle (as will be discussed further below). Both the soul and the intellect are inspired, but ultimately it is not contemplation of Christ's teachings, but the physical impression of his wounds, that gives immortal life. The poem also emphasizes the sensual aspects of meditating on the Passion, so that we are to feel not only sadness, but also the hard wood and the hot marks of the wounds. To Vittoria Colonna, the blood--the colore--seems more essential to the divine painting of Salvation than the words--the disegno.